Performance

And no, I'm not talking about Dubya's limp little pecker. DemVet has an excellent essay up:

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But all of a sudden we've hit this sort of weird peak. People have been getting bombarded for so long with the concept of performance; corporate performace (work harder!), personal performance (home/life/relationships), familial performance (soccer mom/dad), school (right one/SAT/Med/Law) and it goes on and on. We all go to work and have meet performance expectations, sometimes monthly or half-yearly or certainly yearly. But strangely no one does seem to apply these standards to politicians. Elections occur, and they don't get judged on anything but their ability to perform like trained seals at fundraisers: perform well, get enough cash-stuffed fish to run a campaign until you have so much electoral momentum cycle-to-cycle that it's not even a chore anymore, no one runs against you. Performance is only due for the corporate masters who toss the fish, and sometimes their orders are "do nothing".

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